Metro Redux Thoughts/Discussion

I guess we could just use the "Redux announced" thread, but I felt like making this one for some reason.

Managed to play a good six hours at least of 2033 Redux, right up to the start of, "Alley".

Some awesome stuff:
-Tons of new assets designed for the games; I love all of the new outfits they designed for the characters, from Miller's Combat Gear to the oversized-coat and boots for the "Oill guidju there fur one bullit" kid.
-Almost every level has something new added to it. Most random scenery has been touched up, lots of levels have different side passages, and some even are entirely reworked; Defense has been transformed from you just trying to survive an unstoppable tidal wave of mutants that largely run past you, to actually holding the line alongside a group of gunmen. Even if you've played 2033 to death, there's tons of new gameplay.
-LL-levels of optimization, along being just as gorgeous. I had some issues at first with the game running about as well as 2033, but surprisingly enough Shadowplay was eating up a lot of my framerate for some reason. And hitting 60, with motion blur (I think 4A is one of the few developers that does motion blur really well) and lights flashing everywhere and bullets ricocheting all around, firefights are pretty damn intense. The game looks crazy good in motion.
-Stealth borrows heavily from LL, but it's more challenging. Enemies will still eventually calm down if they hear some cans rustle (instead of telepathically turning their collective consciences into a super computer of parallel processing so that they can extrapolate your exact location), but they still seem much more alert and have larger numbers in some areas. There are also numerous heavily armored enemies scattered along patrols, so you can't just walk into a room and bodyshot everyone with MGR's. I think it's a nice balance, gameplay-wise.
-Check your inventory! Pulling out and viewing your journal also brings up a list of all of your ammo at the top of the screen. I think it's a perfect balance that still rewards players who keep track of their ammo mentally (since you're not wasting precious filter/combat time to check), but still makes it easy to keep tabs on what gear you have.
-Extra ranger caches, as well as safe-locked keys (a la the Pavel DLC mission) are spread out throughout all the levels, and make for more interesting and fun looting.
-Small touch, but for a game that focuses so much on immersion, it's about time they introduced "one in the chamber" mechanics (i.e. reloading with one round in the chamber still gives you 31 rounds on tap, and you don't cock the weapon unless you need to).
-New journal entries are a nice touch; found a grammatical error in one of the earlier ones, but they offer some fun extra insight into the game world.
-The seamless transitions through a decent number of levels is really nice. Love it.

Some stuff I wasn't a fan of:
-No game-breaking bugs so far, but I did have a few issues with some terrain textures overlapping in weird ways, and the music system is a little buggy Most issues involved some kind of action piece not getting cut off properly; I had the battle theme play through the entirety of Frontline after escaping from the Red guards into the path below, and Depot had some kind of action theme playing the entire time too, even when I reloaded checkpoints.
-Since it's basically turning 2033 into LL, we lose cool features like different armors and gun-butting. Not the biggest thing, but I was disappointed when I went up to the stealth-suit guy in Market and couldn't talk to him.
-Also since it borrows heavily from last light, I'm basically swimming in ammo again. I've thrown away hundreds of bullets on needless upgrades and new weapons, and still have over 300 MGR left to throw at whatever I want. And even on Survival mode, I'm still constantly overloaded with just about every bullet, to the point where I don't even have to bother looting a good portion of the time, since I know that there's no point other than to look for some more filters and MGR's. The introduction of more Ranger Caches and the safes, I think actually make it even worse at some points than LL was.
-Which leads me to my next point: Weapon balance. It's a shame that they didn't take the time to really rebalance LL's weapons, since having anything other than an AR/Shotgun combo is basically worthless; I believe they might have cut the total shotgun ammo count (I remember it being 80 on Ranger Normal, is 60 now), but otherwise any weapon that isn't one of those two is completely not worth using. Not sure why they believe that you should only be able to carry 36 rounds for a pistol but 80 shotgun shells, but there's nothing to be done unless we finally get an SDK.
-And also in the same vein, selling all of your junk ammo and just loading up on what you needed was one of my favorite parts of 2033. Since it plays like LL, also gone now.
-Two weapon limit on Ranger Mode. More LL stuff; why do we always carry ammo for six different classes of guns if we can only use two at a time?

I'm sure I'm probably missing something, but that's what I've gotten out of my time in the game. Still definitely worth the money, what with the amount of entirely new stuff that they've added, it's just sad to see a good number of issues from Last Light carry over.

 

No, not like that. Does nothing with revolvers, or anything with breach-loaded individual chambers. When you load a magazine-fed fun and cock it, it loads a round into the chamber. When you reload another magazine, you have all the new rounds of the magazine plus the one still in the chamber (i.e. with an AK, this would give you 30+1 rounds, so 31 rounds on tap). Emptying the gun and then reloading will again give you only 30. Most games don't accurately portray this due to laziness/lack of actual gun knowledge, only a few do (Rainbow Six Vegas, Battlefield 3 and 4, Arma of course to name a few off the top of my head).

TL : DR reloading mid-magazine loads one extra total round before a reload (i.e. 31 instead of 30). Reloading from empty changes nothing. This is good because it is realistic.

Also just finished 2033. Really fun, too bad they never bothered redoing the old 720p/30 FPS compressed-to-hell cutscenes with old assets.

 

-If you knew what to do, yes. Stealth was really finnicky, but once you realized you could just bodyshot everybody with a silenced MGR or revolver, it got much easier. The ammo cap also makes some firefights really challenging since you can empty all your ammo for one gun very quickly (Auto Pistol is basically nothing more than a novelty for this exact reason), but it's easier once you realize that a silenced AR with MGR's will basically carry you through the entire game with no ammo issues, once you start selling every other piece of ammo.
-Same. Loved the level, but some meshing geometry or something wasn't done right.
-I mightmight] have seen it earlier, but only place I really remember is the spot in the church.
-There were a lot of OP things in 2033, if you knew how to abuse them. In LL they countered that by instead making more things underpowered. The DLC weapons were pretty game-breaking at least, especially with Librarians. I ended up just killing them anyways in Redux (since the staring mechanic is a bit finicky sometimes), but it was at least more of a challenge, having to stick them with a sticky bomb before unloading an auto shotgun onto them and diving for cover.

 

Redux was the first time I noticed him. Still can't do anything to free him.

Also that's pretty awesome Komo, wasn't too excited to play through LL since I didn't think they'd actually added anything.